The Mind of the Middle Ages, A.D. 200-1500: An Historical Survey

G. L. Laing, Survivals of roman religion ( New York, 1931) esp. pp. 8-15 for lists of saints and special curative function of each, one for toothache,
one for child-birth, and the rest, and their relation to gods of the ancient world;
also cf. V. D. Macchioro, From Orpheus to St. Paul ( New York, 1930), pp. 23-5.

"The shortest cut to the study of the philosophy of the Middle Ages
is to commit the 'Timaeus' to memory," P. Shorey, Platonism, ancient and modern ( Berkeley, 1938), p. 105.

Interesting modern examples of the Platonic theory of reality are the
following:

from a sonnet of Michelangelo:

Heaven-born, the soul a heavenly course must hold;
Beyond the visible world she soars to seek
(For what delights the sense is false and weak)
Ideal form, the universal mould.
The wise man, I affirm, can find no rest
In that which perishes; nor will he lend
His heart to aught that doth on time depend.

The one remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light forever shines, earth shadows fly;
Life like a dome of many colored glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity,
Until death tramples it to fragments.

and finally from Proust:

There are two worlds, one the world of time, where necessity, illusion,
suffering, change, decay, and death are the law; the other the world of eternity, where there is freedom, beauty, and peace. Normal experience is in the

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